Typically, tubular receptacles are sent by physicians to clinical labs. These receptacles contain for instance blood, serum, urine or other body fluids to be tested, the tests being checked off by the physician on an accompanying tag or paper. Illustratively, the test may be for blood sugar, AIDS or a check on liver values or the like. Upon being received at the lab, the receptacles are first coded, for instance using stick-on labels, and the receptacle codes together with the test instructions are fed into a computer.
The receptacles are placed in input magazines. These may be racks receiving a row or rows of receptacles, trays receiving receptacles in substantially planar configuration, or also trays with racks resting on them.
Depending on test instructions, the receptacles must be conveyed to specific analyzers carrying out, for instance, blood-sugar or AIDS tests. Receptacles intended strictly only for particular analyzers are then moved on a destination transport means to such analyzers. Such a transportation means may be a tray manually moved to the analyzer, or a special, illustratively a circular magazine, also a conveyor belt sequentially moving the receptacles themselves, or receptacles placed in magazines, to the analyzer.
A primary distributor of this general type is known from German patent document 296 08 120 U1 and is used to distribute those receptacles arriving mixed in feed magazines to destination transport means.
After the primary distributor has fed the receptacles according to the desired test to the corresponding analyzers, the tests are performed. The test results are fed to the central computer in relation to the receptacle code, and the receptacles then exit the analyzer. Where called for, several tests are carried out on individual receptacles. In that case, the receptacles may be moved to a further analyzer.
Once all tests have been performed on a receptacle, such receptacles usually are archived, that is, stored or placed as such in an archive.
In conventional analyzers, the receptacles exit the analyzer in the same destination transport means on which they arrived. Standardized archive magazines are used, which allow suitable stacking in archive repositories, usually refrigerators, and which bear markings facilitating locating them and which also are preferred on other grounds, but mainly for economy, over the destination transport means, as regards placing the receptacles into the archive.
Typically, the transfer of the receptacles from the destination transport means into the archive magazines is manual and amounts to significant costs.
The known primary distributor of this general type can be conventionally used in an archive mode to place the receptacles into the archive. In this procedure, it moves in the ordinary direction of advance of its conveyor belt. The destination magazines returning from the analyzers are loaded in the source zone. The transfer device places the receptacles on the conveyor belt and the receptacles loaded onto it are removed in the destination zone by means of the sorter device and are placed in this destination zone into archive magazines.
In this manner the transfer of the receptacles into archive magazines can be mechanized in an economical manner.
However, the known archive mode incurs substantial drawbacks. Only standard magazines, for instance identical trays, can be used in the source zone. Accordingly, all analyzers must use the same destination trays. If the destination transport means is a conveyor belt, then receptacle transfer from this belt still must be performed manually. Furthermore, special magazines for individual analyzers, for instance round magazines, also preclude automated storage in the archive.